1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to forwarding A/V streams between heterogeneous networks, and, more particularly, to an A/V stream-forwarding system and a method for forwarding A/V streams from an IP network to an IEEE1394 network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The A/V (audio/video) networks may be classified into IP-based data networks and IEEE 1394 networks being Non-IP networks. The devices that typically use the data networks are computers, and the devices that typically use the IEEE 1394 networks are digital TVs, digital camcorders, and so on.
The IEEE 1394 networks have data transfer rates of 100 Mbps, 200 Mbps, and 400 Mbps, and have the guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). However, the IEEE 1394 network supports restricted file formats, and typically supports the file format of MPEG2 Transport Streams. On the other hand, the data network has a data transfer rate slower than the IEEE 1394 network and does not guarantee the QoS. However, the data network has an advantage in that it can support diverse types of transport stream formats, codecs, transmission protocols, and transmission control protocols.
Recently, despite efforts for integration of the data network and the IEEE 1394 network, there still exist difficulties in integrating the data network and the IEEE 1394 network due to the lack of linkage between the data network and the IEEE 1394 network. The lack of linkage between the two networks, at least in part, is attributed to the differences of QoS, IP, A/V streams, and so on.